Double Arche: Heidegger's Reading of Aristotle's Kinetic Ontology

The central topic that pervades Heidegger’s
interpretation of Aristotle, and the one
above all others that demonstrates his knowledge
and insight, is the topic of kineˆsis.1 For
Heidegger, the problem of movement and the
question of the ontological character of moving
beings was the fundamental question of
Aristotle’s philosophy. Aristotle’s metaphysics
entered into this basic aporia that governed the
experience of being in ancient Greece, the
difficulty of thinking of the being of motion,
the denial of ontological kineˆsis. He was able to
grasp, on the basis of this question, the meaning
of being and thereby to bring to its end the
philosophical struggle of his times. Heidegger
claims not only that Aristotle’s Physics, wherein
the problem of movement is central, is the neveradequately
studied, foundational book of Western
Philosophy, but also that in Physics B1, Aristotle
gives ‘‘the interpretation of phusis that sustains
and guides all succeeding interpretations of the
essence of ‘nature.’ ’’2 Both of these assertions are
rather overarching, and the implications of their
possible legitimacy are rather enormous.
Combined with his additional claim that, for
Aristotle, metaphysics is as much physics as
physics is metaphysics, we can conclude that for
Heidegger, the perspective within which the
Metaphysics should be read is the question of
nature.